Transcription Resources

Transcription in qualitative research is the process of typingrecorded interview conversations verbatim. There are several ways of conducting a transcription.

Traditional Approaches to Transcription

You can transcribe any interview by listening to it in some player, typing, rewinding, and typing again.

Also, you can get a transcription machine with a foot pedal that rewinds the tape by the press of your foot as you need it. These machines can also be set to playback at a slower pace than the actual pace of the conversation allowing you to type simultaneously with the conversation instead of multiple stops and rewinds.

These machines can be found at Best Buy, Office Depot, and other related retail outlets.Depending on your tape, there are transcription machines for regular cassettes and mini cassettes. Make sure when you buy the machine that it is suited to play from your recording media. The black rectangular object in the picture is a foot pedal. By stepping on the foot pedal you can Play/Pause/Step Back, Step Forward, Rewind as needed for you to transcribe and catch up with your typing.

Digital Transcription

Many people like the idea of having their interviews stored digitally instead of in cassettes. Therefore, they record their interviews using a digital voice recorder which creates .wav files, or mp3 files, or other sound files that can be played back on a computer using a media player software such as Windows, Real Player, Quicktime, etc. The recorder can be connected to a computer for a direct transfer of interview files.

Once the recording is transferred into the computer as a sound file, there are transcribing softwares that can be used to transcribe the interviews where you can type directly on the screen and play, pause, rewind, forward with a mouse click and not a foot pedal. 

Here is a page that summarizes the various options for transcription

Transcription Softwares

The following are a list of transcription softwares that are easy to use and in most instances free. Click on the name of the software to go to their respective webpages.

Software	Comments
Transana	Analyze digital video or audio data. Transcribe it, identify analytically interesting clips, assign keywords to clips, arrange and rearrange clips, create complex collections of interrelated clips, explore relationships between applied keywords
Transcriber	Extremely easy to use. For audio files only.
Express Scribe	Audio recordings. can be used for PC or Mac. It is installed on the typist's computer and can be controlled using a transcription foot pedal or using the keyboard (with 'hot' keys).